CATSKILL — The Greene County Legislature is set to approve $1,250,000 in funding to stabilize the shoreline along the Historic Catskill Point Warehouse Building.
During a Public Works Committee meeting Monday evening, the committee unanimously approved a resolution to appropriate $1,250,000 to cover the estimated cost of the shore stabilization project. The resolution will move to the full Legislature for a vote.
Greene County Deputy Administrator Warren Hart told the Legislature on Monday the county has applied for Federal Emergency Management Agency grant money twice for the project but has yet to be successful in securing federal money for the construction.
“First it was a competition nationally and then the second application was local,” Hart said during the meeting. “In both instances, we did not score high enough. Their cost benefit calculator is not the type of program that works well for this type of project. You have to have a lot of loss from previous flooding. Since it’s a very rustic building, it’s mostly mucking out the silt and things like that. So we need to proceed to move to the full construction drawings. The permitting has already been worked on.”
In March, the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services submitted a FEMA application for $979,000 on behalf of the county for funding for the shoreline project.
Hart said former Congressman Antonio Delgado, state Sen. Michelle Hinchey and Assemblyman Chris Tague, R-Schoharie, all advocated on the county’s behalf for both FEMA applications.
If the county is unable to acquire FEMA grants, the $1,250,000 cost of the project will be taken from the county’s fund balance.
“We’ve been working on this for over a year and we need to get some traction on it and actually get some engineering done and actually put it out to bid,” Hart told the Legislature.
Greene County Administrator Shaun Groden said the Historic Catskill Point shoreline has experienced serious erosion on its bank wall.
“The Hudson River side is all eroding,” Groden said after Monday’s meeting. “It’s getting to be underneath the foundation of the barn. So they’ll drive steel pylons about 60% of the way where the old boat launch was just past what’s now the dock. That would prevent further erosion from undermining the foundation of the barn.”
Hart told the Legislature the county has conducted emergency repairs on the shoreline on two occasions to address the erosion.
“It’s not just the sheet piling, that dock has not been worked on in about 20 years,” Hart said. “So it needs to be resurfaced and the pylons and cleats that hold the ships down, we have a temporary cabling system in place in order to accommodate those big ships. We’ve limped along for too long without really getting a permanent solution on this. We need to get engineering and get good specs together to see what the real cost would be.”
Greene County Legislator Michael Bulich, R-Catskill, added that the project needs to be addressed urgently.
“If you have a slope failure that tumbles into the channel there and you have an oil tanker going up to the Port of Albany and it bottoms out right there, that’s a major problem,” Bulich said during the Aug. 8 committee meeting.